OpenOffice as an SFS with Menu Pet

[mikeslr]

Well, I see Mikewalsh has beaten me to it by publishing an OpenOffice portable. There may be occasions when you'd prefer an SFS and the attached pet can be used with any OpenOffice version 4 (maybe others): OpenOffice offers a main download, but also other versions including older, language specific and IIRC 32-bit.

OpenOffice-menus.pet

(65.03 KiB) Downloaded 36 times

Having menus to OpenOffice's component applications --such as writer, spreadsheet and presentations-- means you can open those directly. But perhaps more important, you can set those components as the defaults and associate them with file-types so that the appropriate application will open by clicking a datafile of its associated file-type.

To use the pet you first have to download a 'deb' from https://www.openoffice.org/download/index.html after also selecting your preferred version. I recommend that after making the selection that you Right-Click the box named "Download Full Installation" and select Copy Link. Open Menu>Internet>Uget and allow that to do your download. The tar.gz to be downloaded is 159 Mb and Uget will re-continue interrupted downloads.

Once you obtain the tar.gz, use UExtract or pExtract to extract it. File-browse into the extracted folder within which you'll find a folder named DEBS.

OpenOffice-tar.gz Extracted.png (458.38 KiB) Viewed 1073 times

Leave the window to it open. Right-click an empty space somewhere else, from the pop-up Menu select New>Directory and give it an appropriate name. As the above graphic shows I chose OpenOffice64. Left-Click that folder to open it. Now copy all the debs from the other Window into that folder. A quick way is Right-Click an empty space, then press Ctrl-a. Everything will be highlighted/selected. Left-PRESS, hold, then drag any file from there into the other folder and select Copy. All will be copied. As you don't want the folder named 'desktop-integration', Right-Click it and select Delete from the pop-up Menu.
Now download, then SFS-Load PaDS, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 6355#p6355. Then Right-Click the folder you created now holding the debs. PaDS will unpack them and create an SFS in /root. A Window of /root will open when PaDS finishes.
Move the SFS out of /root before loading/testing. If you SFS-Load it from /root, when you unload it will be deleted.
Then, having downloaded the OpenOffice-menus.pet, install it. You may have to 'Fix-Menus' for the OpenOffice applications to appear on your Menu.

The pet places a 'Quick-Launcher' of applications on the Taskbar. If you don't want that, file-browse into /root/Startup and delete the script named OOQuick.

[mikewalsh]

@mikeslr :-

I'm glad to hear PaDS works for you, Mike! I've tried it a handful of times since I got this HP Pavilion some 3½ years ago and, without fail, every time it's frozen my Pups up solid. None of the usual tricks we employ with unresponsive Puppies has had the slightest effect, and a hard power-off has been the only solution. And then the Pup in question acts like nothing has happened..!

Frankly, I found Oscar's method of booting a Puppy "pfix=ram", installing every one of the dozens of tiny .debs - I really don't understand why the Open Office guys chose to do things this way - then copying the resulting 'openoffice4' directory from /opt to somewhere safe before shutting that Puppy down again, works fine for this particular use-case.

Something about this rig does NOT 'play nice' with PaDS, so as far as I'm concerned, I've given up on it. It's certainly not due to lack of processing power, RAM or storage, 'cos I have all three in abundance.....

(*shrug...*)

T'other Mike.

[mikeslr]

@mikewalsh, Sorry PaDS doesn't work for you. But I won't be able to figure out why. There's one thing I didn't like about it when I first used it on low-ram computers. It builds the SFS in /root --which is in RAM-- while also using RAM to temporarily hold files from the source packages. But I was unable to follow ITSMERSH's logic to make any modifications.

[The original thru version 1.1.4 was more complicated as it could use xdotools to create a list of source packages from anywhere and also create a pet. The current version requires all packages be in one specifically named folder, and can only produce an SFS. The name used in the former will also be the SFS;s name].

Beyond my programming skills but the program is actually simple. Requires two or three folders: (1) A Source folder, (2) a Destination folder and perhaps (3) an intermediate Work-folder. Create a for-next loop to work your way thru the packages in the Source folder. Serially copy their contents one-at-a-time into the Destination folder or, if extraction is required, extract the contents into the 'work folder; copy them from there into the Destination folder then delete the contents from the work folder; or just use 'move'. When the contents of all source packages have been copied into the Destination folder, dir2sfs the Destination folder [and delete the Work-folder].

After dir2sfs PaDS deletes the Destination folder. But I'd leave it to be deleted at the User's discretion. While the produced SFS is good for testing, often some adjustments have to be made. And an existing Destination folder would permit use of dir2pet immediately or after making adjustments.